Swift Boat Ad - This band of brothers has a different view of Kerry

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Apparantly Seattle Times columnist Colin Levy is buying this crap. One can e-mail Levy at [email protected]

Don't look now, but the Kerry campaign is about to start attacking a group of Vietnam War veterans. After making Kerry's service as a swift-boat captain a cornerstone of the Democratic National Convention last week, the campaign's new goal will be to discredit some of Kerry's fellow soldiers as (shudder) politically motivated.
Specifically, the trouble comes in the form of a band of veterans who served with Kerry during his glory tour in Vietnam and who will publish a book of their own memories of the young skipper called "Unfit for Command" in coming weeks.

As a chronicle and anticipated exposé of the young soldier's actual leadership in the jungles, the book will cast a decidedly less-flattering light on the candidate as soldier. Among the charges are that Kerry exaggerated his injuries and was inept at capturing the respect of his men, who saw him as overweening and ambitious.

-more-

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001996876_collin05.html

[A_Possum]

1. Suffering outrage overload ;)

LOL, I can't even get excited about an article as stupid as this one.

ummm..."Don't look now, but the Kerry campaign is about to start attacking a group of Vietnam War veterans."

Up is Down, Black is White, yeah right.

[glitch]

2. this local rag is so putrid I don't even read the free online version

but boy did their owner squack about the fcc wanting to allow larger media conglomerates.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. Yeah Frank Blethen

He complains about larger media conglomerates (which I actually agree with him on) but wants his to be the only newspaper in Seattle.

[Spiffarino]

4. I emailed Levey (I was nice)

Mr. Levey,

Your last quote sums up the article quite well. We did lose the war at home. However, as much as these revisionists would like to blame John Kerry and other anti-war activists for our failure in Vietnam, the fact is the war was lost by powerful politicians in D.C. who didn't give a fig about the people fighting it.

Kerry and the other vets knew then that the politics behind the war were, to put it bluntly, bullshit. Too many veterans came home from the war disillusioned because they weren't allowed to take the fight to the enemy and were not allowed - for purely political reasons - to fight an actual war. They exposed themselves to all kinds of risk and performed heroically in a war that Washington had no political will to win.

I am old enough to remember, and John Kerry's actions after the war shed light on the realities of Vietnam for those of us who were inclined to believe John Wayne - a man who never spent a minute on a battlefield - and his "Green Berets" version of the war. We were stunned that decorated veterans of the Vietnam war could denounce it so passionately, but once the shock wore off we were able to look at our leaders in a new way, and we didn't like the liars we saw.

Now about SBVT. You scoff that Kerry says they are political. Sorry, but he speaks the truth. This is nothing more than a Republican front group trying to spin Kerry's war record against him. Do you know how many people in the organization actually served on Kerry's swift boat? One. There were nine men altogether who fought side by side with him. Eight unabashedly support John Kerry and always have. Do the math.

Did you also know that the very people in this group who are making these scurrilous accusations against Kerry have praised him in the past? Colin, you are probably an honest journalist. I suggest you do a little snooping and find out where these guys are really coming from. Start with Merrie Spaeth.

[Liberal Gramma]

5. Colin Levey

is a conservative hack, with the political integrity of a George Will or Robert Novak, but without their writing abilities. She sneers, Coulter-like, at every liberal position, while trumpeting every republican talking point. So, no, she is not an honest journalist.